pheelix:BigBooper: Cybernetic: In other news, some people don't know how to do a basic budget that includes items like car maintenance.

RumsfeldsReplacement: At some point, don't you have to just give up and say "stupid is as stupid does"? These people have no hope.

A lot of people know that this is a really bad deal, but because of medical bills, or lost jobs, or a host of other reasons, people get behind and can't get caught up.

These types of places pray on the desperate as much as they do on the stupid.

I'll keep that in mind next time I see a guy pull out of one of those places with brand new 20" rims on his '88 Brougham and a big screen strapped to the roof.

A couple years ago a friend of mine was getting new tires for his car, the lady checking out in front of him used three seperate credit cards to pay the bill, he started to feel kind of sorry for her, then they pulled up a Escalde with new 20inchers, he didn't feel so bad for her anymore, or at least in the same way.

FTA: I know you have to pay a lot more this way," said Florence Cherry, a 57-year-old nurse who drives the 15-year-old van when her husband, a Vietnam veteran, isn't using it to get to his job as a prison guard. "But we didn't really have a choice.

Both of those are fairly decent paying jobs. What they have isn't poor, it's financial mismanagement.

pheelix:BigBooper: Cybernetic: In other news, some people don't know how to do a basic budget that includes items like car maintenance.

RumsfeldsReplacement: At some point, don't you have to just give up and say "stupid is as stupid does"? These people have no hope.

A lot of people know that this is a really bad deal, but because of medical bills, or lost jobs, or a host of other reasons, people get behind and can't get caught up.

These types of places pray on the desperate as much as they do on the stupid.

I'll keep that in mind next time I see a guy pull out of one of those places with brand new 20" rims on his '88 Brougham and a big screen strapped to the roof.

In TFA, it said that the big chain that used to rent/sell primarily rims, now gets 2/3's of it's business from tires. Yes some of that is stupid people doing stupid things, but more and more, it's people who just need tires to get to work.

BigBooper:pheelix: BigBooper: Cybernetic: In other news, some people don't know how to do a basic budget that includes items like car maintenance.

RumsfeldsReplacement: At some point, don't you have to just give up and say "stupid is as stupid does"? These people have no hope.

A lot of people know that this is a really bad deal, but because of medical bills, or lost jobs, or a host of other reasons, people get behind and can't get caught up.

These types of places pray on the desperate as much as they do on the stupid.

I'll keep that in mind next time I see a guy pull out of one of those places with brand new 20" rims on his '88 Brougham and a big screen strapped to the roof.

In TFA, it said that the big chain that used to rent/sell primarily rims, now gets 2/3's of it's business from tires. Yes some of that is stupid people doing stupid things, but more and more, it's people who just need tires to get to work.

TFA also used a couple with decent jobs who could easily be making $100K/year between the two of them as an example.

TheManMythLegend:Somethings is fishy, a Chevy Silverado is an odd size? There are probaly 20 Silverado's in the parking lot I can see from the window at work.

One would have to suspect he wasn't running factory-stock steel rims.

devildog123:FTA: I know you have to pay a lot more this way," said Florence Cherry, a 57-year-old nurse who drives the 15-year-old van when her husband, a Vietnam veteran, isn't using it to get to his job as a prison guard. "But we didn't really have a choice.

Both of those are fairly decent paying jobs. What they have isn't poor, it's financial mismanagement.

It depends a bit on how much you read into those titles. An LPN will call herself a nurse (at least in these parts) and make around $13.50/hr. Half the prisons around here are privatized CCA joints. No cushy government pension. $12-14/hr. (And they wonder why so many of the guards are on the take). Although both jobs tend to have lots of overtime if you want it.

There are places all over that sell used tires if you have to get one in a pinch, or just get a new one per month for four months.

Never in the history of my life, one that started with the inflation-corrected income of $16,000 per year the first year we were married, have I ever even thought of using a rent-to-own store or title loan joint. People who do pretty much deserve to be fleeced.

Indeed it is. These rent to own places have never been good deals. I'm fortunate. I've saved up for cars before I bought them - never a lease or a lease or financing that required a monthly payment. That's farked up.

it makes much more sense to me to earn even the measly interest that banks offer before I buy a new car than to pay interest after I do.

I also keep my cars until the wheels fall off. My current car is 12 years old. It runs fine. It's not fancy or anyting. The car before that I had for 11 years.

I even learned how to change the brakes on the damn thing - that was actually quite simple and much less expensive than getting some flunky mechanics to do it for me.

tuna fingers:My project colleague pointed this out the Rent-A-Wheel shops when we both moved down to El Paso, TX five years ago.

This isn't new.

I saw these when I first moved to ABQ four years ago, though they were more about the rims and low profile tires. What is new to me is the fact that some of these places are now moving into regular tires for the factory rims. Sad that people can't save even enough to buy a couple of those at a time from Discount or somewhere like that.

We have way less income than the people in TFA and still manage to have enough cushion to buy tires for the car if the need arises.

FTA: I know you have to pay a lot more this way," said Florence Cherry, a 57-year-old nurse who drives the 15-year-old van when her husband, a Vietnam veteran, isn't using it to get to his job as a prison guard. "But we didn't really have a choice.

Both of those are fairly decent paying jobs. What they have isn't poor, it's financial mismanagement.

A "nurse" doesn't mean an RN with a bachelor's . She could be a CNA who changes bedpans in a nursing home for $8 an hour. He's a prison guard in a state without much in the way of unions so of course he's not raking in the dough either like he would in Calif or even Wisconsin.

Couple that with that they live in Rich Square, NC which I just mapped and is so middle-of-nowhere I don't know how to even relate to it.

Rent-A-Wheel/Rent-A-Tire operates 88 stores in 11 states and expects to top 100 locations this year. Company president Matt Seaburn told Tire Business that about a third of his customers buy tires and wheels upfront and another third use a 90-day payment option.

"Then the rest of the customers go on rent-to-own," he added, "and a majority of those customers do end up buying it at some point." Seaburn notes that some customers prefer to rent perpetually, to keep up with the newest automotive trends and styles.

"They are interested in the latest and greatest product," he said, "and so maybe every several months or so, they're asking about what's new that they can put on their car and they'll return the product that they have and just put on what's new."

Tom_Slick:fickenchucker: There are places all over that sell used tires if you have to get one in a pinch, or just get a new one per month for four months.

This, the ones around here charge around $25.00 a tire, and they usually have plenty of tread.

/Buy used tires for my rotating collection of project cars.

All of the junkyards around here sell used tires. Last time I needed one for the short term, I paid $10, and they put it on the rim as a favor. Of course that was a few years ago, and I only needed it to last a couple months / couple thousand miles.

I had a serious injury last year, and thankfully my wife has a good job with good health insurance. But since my medical bills were over $500,000, and I'm only now starting to be able to get back to work, I can understand the situations that people can get into. If my wife had lost her job, or had even just lost health insurance, things would have been very different for us.

TheManMythLegend:Somethings is fishy, a Chevy Silverado is an odd size? There are probaly 20 Silverado's in the parking lot I can see from the window at work.

They are from Denham Springs. Livingston Parish is one of the go to locations to live in outside of the Baton Rouge proper if you want to escape 'the city' and all the bad stuff that is there. Once you move there and you buy a truck, you are required by Parish ordinance to put on a lift kit and mudders so you can show everyone how you are not part of that big city life* and prove that you grill it and kill it just like the Nuge. Browning antler stickers and other such are highly encouraged. You also get a special card you can carry so that while you drive your jacked up V8 4x4 Silverado to and from work, 30 miles each way, you can still complain about the high cost of gas (thanks 0bummer) and how bad traffic is when you drive through the city on your way to work with everyone else from outside of the city.

*The alternative is that you don't have put on mudders. It is fine to put in an ECU chip, some nicer, sport rims (factory rims are passe) and of course the more expensive non-standard tires.

Seriously? If money is tight and you need a new tire, that's why the Good lord invented used tire shops. Generally thier stock comes from wrecked autos and you can, if you work the guys at the shop a bit, get an almost new tire for $30-35 installed and on your car. I've done it i lots of times when I knew I was getting rid of a car soon and didn;t want to dump too much more money into it

RumsfeldsReplacement:At some point, don't you have to just give up and say "stupid is as stupid does"? These people have no hope.

Remember, everyone is someone's stupid. Your doctor thinks you're stupid because you don't know how to treat diabetes, so he sells you treatments for $1000s that don't actually work and you die. Buyer beware! Lol!

Rent-to-own only makes sense for one item: a house. Even cars should be saved for and paid in full (or, if you need to build credit, just put that saved money in its own account and set up automatic withdrawal).

There is something mighty fishy about that article. I have been looking for new tires for my vehicle and if one wanted two one can get a brand new set of tires with 40K warranty for $225, installed. Believe it or not most of the money is not in the tires themselves but in all the add-on crap like road hazard etc. When you look at the total cost of maintaining a vehicle over a five year period the tires actually represent only about 3% of the cost. So I find it difficult to imagine how (a) you cannot save $225 for tires (b) how this can be a sustainable business model. It is just ignorance.

And this doesn't even mention used tire shops. There is a local place that was willing to sell me four used tires for $75. If nothing else, buys people time to save the money up for new tires.

Somehow this strikes me as something that won't be as common in places where people can get a credit card with a decent APR and do the math. If the NC couple from TFA had put the tires all on a card for around $330 (or whatever they cost at Walmart), then used the $54.60 per month toward their card payments, they'd have the tires paid off much faster than 18 months.

Of course, I'm assuming these people could get a credit card in the first place. I guess then I'm also assuming they don't already carry a huge credit card balance.

"Llantas Usadas" was a sign all over the place where I grew up (San Gabriel Valley, CA). Still looking for those places here in PA. Places where there is inspection make you get a new set of tires periodically. So Cal, you run em til you can see the air inside.

We used Rent A Center to get a recliner for a few weeks after my wife had surgery. They dropped it off and picked it up and I didn't have to pay several hundred dollars for a recliner we didn't have room for. The place isn't completely useless.

Chevello:We used Rent A Center to get a recliner for a few weeks after my wife had surgery. They dropped it off and picked it up and I didn't have to pay several hundred dollars for a recliner we didn't have room for. The place isn't completely useless.

The rental places aren't actually bad if you need something short term...say the washing machine is broken and you have to wait a week or two for parts? Renting one isn't a bad idea if you hate the idea of sitting in the laundromat (which would cost the same anyway, with all of the added frustration added in as a bonus). If you're using it for anything other than a temporary measure, you're going to get ripped off hard.